Question to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government:

To ask the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, with reference to the Correspondence entitled HM Land Registry Chair’s letter, published 6 March 2025, what progress the Land Registry has made on (a) opening up existing data and information on land and (b) reforms to deeper transparency of land ownership in (i) Southport constituency and (ii) across the country.

HM Land Registry (HMLR) already provides public access to information on individual property titles for a small fee, and it received 27.8 million information service requests in 2024-25. It also provides a mix of free and paid-for data services through its “Use land and property data” service on gov.uk. The Use land and property data platform, which can be found on gov.uk here, now sees more than 6,000 users downloading datasets every month.

HMLR is committed to maximising the value of the data it holds and making it findable, accessible, interoperable, and reusable, while ensuring that risks to personal information and ownership security remain well controlled.

The information HMLR holds is complex and in a variety of formats. Its economic and social value cannot be fully realised without the investment HMLR is already putting in to digitise the data. HMLR has an ambitious programme of transformational activity, such as the award-winning Local Land Charges programme, that uses AI to accelerate the pace of change.

This year, one of HMLR's flagship programmes – Geospatial and Data Transformation – is going to deliver a change that will make land ownership data more accessible and valuable to people. HMLR has worked with GeoPlace to improve the way in which Unique Property Reference Numbers (or UPRNs) can help in matching ownership records, which are map-based, with other property data that is address-based.

HMLR will then be able to add these links into more of its published datasets in 2026, in addition to those that already contain the UPRNs, such as the UK and Overseas Ownership and Price Paid Datasets. The National Polygon Service and Registered Leases will be prioritised for this enhancement to their accessibility and utility. We will also ensure that INSPIRE polygons – showing ownership boundaries – are also easy to relate to other property data. This will allow users to match and merge HMLR data with other government data sources. HMLR has also established a dedicated team to develop and improve the way that its data can be accessed through automated requests (via APIs) that software providers in the PropTech market use. This will enable better and faster services for consumers and business.

Alongside its transformation activities, HMLR is supporting the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government in the delivery of a new policy around the Contractual Controls Dataset. This will offer all stakeholders a reliable and accessible information source regarding land ownership controls beyond the usual freehold and leasehold ownership information.

HMLR's recently published Strategy 2025+, which can be found on gov.uk here, sets out its ambitions to further support the property market and beyond with its data over the next 10 years. All HMLR’s data on property ownership can be publicly accessed today and the investment it is engaged in will increase the ease and speed with which it can be obtained and used.